Mumbai: The Fourth Industrial Revolution led by Internet of Things (IoT) is set to change the game of skills and future work. Perhaps, we are now at the initial wave of changes as far as machine intelligence, automation and robotics are concerned. The World Economic Forum predicted on its Future of Jobs report that more than one third of current top skills required across all jobs will change in the next five years. Moreover, in Turkey, China, India and Italy over 40% of the top skills required across all jobs will change in the next five years.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution combined with other socio-economic and demographic changes, will transform labour markets in the next five years, leading to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies, predicts World Economic Forum. Artificial intelligence and machine-learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3-D printing, and genetics and biotechnology will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labour markets over the next five years, the skill sets will undergo dramatic changes in the new landscape.
The impact of the skill instability will be the most intense in Turkey, China, India and Italy as over 40% of the top skills required across all jobs will change by 2020. While ASEAN, GCC and Japan will have only 25% instability in the top skills mix overall, in the United Kingdom, 28% of the top skills mix is expected to change by 2020. In the United States this figure is expected to be 29% while in France (28%) and Germany (39%) the situation is even more challenging.
In terms of overall impact, white-collar office and administrative roles will suffer the most. The report indicated that nearly 7.1 million jobs could be lost through redundancy, automation or disintermediation. However, this loss is expected to be partially offset by the creation of 2.1 million new jobs, mainly in more specialized “job families”, such as Computer and Mathematical or Architecture and Engineering.
On this difficult backdrop, all stakeholders work together for upskilling, reskilling and collaborating rather than competing on talent. In addition, the governments should come forward and bring fundamental changes in education systems to prepare for the new labour market.
